Tom Arup

Australia's reversal on climate change action will ultimately not stick because the rest of the world will make clear that it is unacceptable, globally renowned economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs says.

Speaking to Fairfax Media, Professor Sachs said the extreme shocks and pain of climate change were now being felt across the planet and governments acting in an ''anti-scientific perspective or an extraordinarily short-term perspective'' will be surprised by the response from other countries.

''This government was surprised this week with the reception to the budget,'' Professor Sachs said. ''And I think it is going to be surprised by the global reception of its climate policies as well unless it begins to understand the real situation in the world and what's really expected of a country like Australia.''

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Professor Sachs is perhaps best known for his work on poverty eradication, including his bestselling book The End of Poverty. He is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a special adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

He is in the country to launch work on the Australian section of a global project for the UN to map paths for 13 countries to make deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions that are consistent with keeping global warming at relatively safe levels of below 2 degrees.

The first stage of the project - led in Australia by think tank ClimateWorks and Australian National University economist Professor Frank Jotzo - will be fed into a September world leaders climate meeting in New York that has been convened by Mr Ban. The meeting is an attempt to build momentum towards December 2015 climate negotiations in Paris, at which countries are due to finalise a new global climate treaty to take effect from 2020.

Professor Sachs pitched the Paris meeting as the ''last chance'' for the world to keep global warming below 2 degrees.

He said while business as usual on climate change could be seen as the most likely outcome, it was dangerous and the planet would be led towards massive climate feedback loops that would carry us well beyond the 2-degree threshold.

He said ultimately Australia was not a smaller player in stopping climate change and was among a handful of countries that mattered because of their fossil fuel use and production, including China, the US, the European Union, Canada, India and the Gulf states.

Professor Sachs said he had told Foreign Minister Julie Bishop this week Australia should join other major coal producers to develop technologies that captured and stored emissions from burning coal because the world needed to know soon whether it would work.

Along with cuts to renewable energy, the Abbott government cut $440 million from carbon capture and storage programs in last week's budget.

128 comments

If God cannot fix climate change, the price on carbon certainly won't do much to help ? 'Live for the moment, for tomorrow we die'.

Commenter

adam

Location

yarrawonga

Date and time

May 21, 2014, 7:06AM

Not just out of touch with the science of climate change - out of touch with this century - seems to be living in an alternate world where iit is always 1954 and the Queen is coming for tea

Commenter

rod steiger

Location

toukley

Date and time

May 21, 2014, 8:38AM

The coalition policy on renewables, which has resulted in their wanting to remove the carbon tax, will end up costing this country billions. Jobs, billions in investment dollars? The coalition thinks the renewables industry is an unworthy industry.

We need to get this rotten mob of backward looking anti-capitalists out of government before they completely ruin our economy.

Commenter

Caroline

Date and time

May 21, 2014, 9:06AM

its especially scary that even though we currently have carbon tax global temperatures have not gone down.. if we get rid of carbon tax we are doomed !! 5 % of 1.5 % of australian emissions will go a long way in achieving this target.Do you all want a future where people pay less for electricity and gas usage if we get rid of carbon tax ? do you

Commenter

Doom and Gloom

Date and time

May 21, 2014, 9:12AM

Yes, well apparently it's better to place faith in an invisible,unknowable god, trading ephemeral promises for outcomes in another, alleged, plane of existence, than doing something about a known, albeit invisible, gas, with known properties, such as heat trapping, that is causing measurable and detrimental outcomes in this one, guaranteed reality.Well, Abbott and Co have certainly held to their religious tenets and, as per a biblical saying of, 'if thine eye offends thee pluck it out', he and they have been offended by science and have plucked it out, not only from a government ministry but most all public policy. When school chaplains trump trained councillors for public funding we can know that science and reason run a distant second place in what passes for this governments reasoning and actions.

Commenter

Warwick

Date and time

May 21, 2014, 9:18AM

But Adam, we have always had climate change. Why 10,000 years ago we had an ice age, Noah and the cultures around him report a great flood, medieval warm period, 17th century mini ice age, and from 1900 to 1950 the world cooled. Historically, the earths climate always has been changing.

Commenter

Kingstondude

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

May 21, 2014, 9:33AM

The UK has changed since Abbott left. They have smart industrial leaders over there, and excellent manufacturing facilities which genuinely address quality management issues.

Commenter

adam

Location

yarrawonga

Date and time

May 21, 2014, 9:48AM

Hope that irony button is once again firmly jammed on Adam.The response to CC and anything remotely environmental by this regime is nothing short of scandalous. In fact their response to anything is nothing short of blasphemous too. They have no respect for anyone or anything unless it involves greed and their warped ideological view of the world.

Commenter

A country gal

Date and time

May 21, 2014, 10:04AM

@Adam,, 9:48AM " They have smart industrial leaders over there, and excellent manufacturing facilities which genuinely address quality management issues." I 100% agree with you. However, we cannot get industry competitive here with high power costs. We can offset our high labour costs with cheap power. But we won't because the Carbon Tax treats industry like smokers. Cheap power will provide jobs for our less skilled, new migrants, and poor.

Commenter

Kingstondude

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

May 21, 2014, 10:53AM

A usual, simplistic conservative line by Kingstondude - always predictable and ever wrong.

Climate science does not deny that change is a constant - it is the RATE of change that is exacerbated by our relentless exploitation of finite materials. What would normally take thousands of years is now happening in decades, and any chance of species adaptation (including ours) is diminished exponentially because of the acceleration of the process. And before you rush down the path of the other illiterati here who come out with the Piers Akerman line "but the carbon tax hasn't lowered temperatures", I'll save you the trouble - it's not meant to lower temperature but to SLOW the rate of change. If we don't manage to do that then the planet will have its own response, and it won't be to our advantage.